Full benefits of Arizona’s $6.5 million dust detection system mired in red tape

PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. (AZFamily) — It was a major part of a revolutionary effort to reduce dust storm-related fatalities along a notorious stretch of Interstate 10 south of Phoenix.

Engineers with the Arizona Department of Transportation would combine freeway sensors, programmable speed limit signs, and ground-based Doppler radar in a pilot project meant to see if they could save lives with earlier warnings about dust storms. However, four years after the system went online, the radar portion has yet to be used to its full potential.

“It’s functioning, and the data comes to us. We know it’s coming in. We’re not meteorologists, but it is serviced. It’s ready to go,” said Steve Elliott, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Transportation.

According to ADOT documents, news releases, and articles published between 2016 and 2021, data from the X-band Doppler radar system was intended to go to the National Weather Service, where meteorologists would share it with ADOT traffic and emergency managers. However, sharing the data between two different government agencies—one state and one federal—has proven to be more complicated than previously thought.

“We are working on an intergovernmental agreement to get that data over to the National Weather Service. And it has taken longer than we anticipated,” said Elliott.

The pilot project was created in response to a particularly deadly stretch of Interstate 10 between Tucson and Phoenix, near Picacho Peak. Dust storms can pop up with little or no warning, reducing visibility in a matter of moments. Between 2010 and 2015, 83 dust-storm-related crashes occurred in that area, three of which involved fatalities.

In 2016, ADOT engineers began designing a first-of-its-kind system to see if technology could help make the freeway safer during severe weather along that stretch of Interstate 10. Visibility sensors on the side of the freeway would monitor dust particles in real-time.

Programmable speed limit signs would reduce the speed limit from 75 miles per hour to as low as 35 miles per hour when visibility fell to dangerous levels. The Doppler radar system had the potential to spot storms - and dust storms - as far as 40 miles away, which could alert meteorologists of the potential danger.

The total program cost was $6.5 million, paid for by a federal grant.

Meteorologists from the National Weather Service said the doppler would help to fill in a radar “blind spot” between Phoenix and Tucson. The weather radar systems in Phoenix and Tucson have difficulty detecting low-altitude dust storms and other weather phenomena in the Picacho Peak area.

“So putting in a weather radar right there would be a tremendous asset to be able to detect the beginning of a dust storm and be able to get those warnings out in better time,” said Ken Waters, who retired in 2020 as the Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

Waters says he and his colleagues were under the impression the ADOT radar system would begin providing data to the National Weather Service shortly after completion.

“I was always kind of wondering what the status was, but I never heard for sure. My expectation right before I was retiring was that it was going to come online and become available to us very, very soon,” said Waters.

In 2021, the project was recognized with a Gamechanger award from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

According to ADOT, the visibility sensors and variable speed limit signs have been functioning and performing as anticipated since 2020. He says they have activated and alerted motorists about dust on the freeway roughly 50 times. However, the radar system is hung up with the intergovernmental agreement between ADOT and the National Weather Service.

“There is good news, even after four years. And that is, we’re good on our side. We have an agreement over to the weather service. It is my understanding that it’s at the regional office. If it comes back signed, we’re ready to go,” said Elliott.

It was quite a shock to fire and medical crews, who are often called to accidents along that stretch of freeway. They believed the weather radar was up and running already.

“I’ll be quite honest with you. I wasn’t aware that that wasn’t connected,” said Eloy Fire District Chief Kelly Weddle.

Weddle says getting an earlier warning that a dust storm or severe weather is on its way would benefit motorists, as well as his firefighters and paramedics, who respond to the crashes.

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